


In Other Words

by DCBrierton



Category: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/F, Grief, Lie Detector, Moving On, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 12:36:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20675495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DCBrierton/pseuds/DCBrierton
Summary: There had only been one way, ever, to get Liz to face feelings she was determined to ignore...Olive builds a lie detector.





	In Other Words

**Author's Note:**

> This picks up after Bill's death and deals with its effects on other characters; there is no other death.

After Bill died, Elizabeth never cried. Olive started crying at the hospital and felt like she never stopped. She carried on, of course, because she had to—the children needed her to be strong, so in front of them, she tried to be. The occasional tear still crept down her cheek when she found herself cracking too many eggs, but Byrne patted her awkwardly on the shoulder or Olive Ann asked what was wrong, and she swallowed her tears and told them she was fine, just sad. It was when Liz had gone to work and the children were at school, the long quiet days in the empty house, that Olive was overcome with grief. She’d sit in Bill’s office, at his typewriter, thinking she’d write an article for Family Circle, advice for how to handle a child’s nightmares or picky eating, and wouldn’t be able to see the keys for sobbing. Then, finally, she’d run dry and go put the kettle on. She never wrote one of those articles; eventually she shut the office door and stopped entering it except to dust. Then, even to dust.

At night, too, she’d lie down next to Liz, and at first she’d snuggle in close and everything would be fine. But just as she thought she’d started falling asleep there’d be the sensation of falling, and the cold air behind her would remind her that Bill was gone and never coming back, and she’d start to cry, unsuccessfully stifling her tears in the hope that Liz wouldn’t notice her weakness. But Liz always noticed, always rolled over and took Olive in her arms and murmured gently to her, _hush, darling_ and _I know, I can’t believe he’s gone_, and _let me bring you some tea_. Her face twisted oddly when she put on the lamp to find a handkerchief or go and get the tea, but Olive never saw even a tear shining in her eyes. 

When spring finally came again, nearly a year after Bill died, the family was settling into a rhythm. Peter was still staying closer to Liz than Olive remembered from before Bill’s illness, making sure that when they were out for a walk or working in the yard he could always see her, and Byrne’s face was too serious when he took the carving knife from Olive. But they’d started pushing to stay out later after school during the winter, which Olive had welcomed as a sign of healing. As spring broke, they were becoming less serious at home too, smiling and laughing as they listened to the radio—Olive Ann had even started reading comics again, though not Wonder Woman. Olive, too, had started to feel better, was beginning to think about moving the typewriter to the kitchen table and trying to write again. But Liz—Liz was still too quiet, still stared blankly at the walls when she didn’t realize Olive was watching, still cracked too few jokes. 

So one day, in the quiet time she once used for writing but had had no real purpose for in months, Olive got down the hatboxes. She sorted carefully through them, pulling out the nurse costume for herself, the rope—no, not the rope. She couldn’t face the rope. She was suddenly frozen, unable to take it out, and unable to shut that box and open the next. She sat on the bed, staring at the rope, then at the wall, then finally shook herself and put everything back. She put the boxes away and dusted the bedroom so that any disarrangement would just look like housework, invisible to Liz unless Olive brought it up specifically. She’d found thick dust on all the shelves above Liz’s eye level when she returned to the house and hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. Had, probably, done both. 

A few days later, she sat down at the kitchen table with her tea and thought about trying again. Thought about what she could choose that would break through Liz’s walls. Then she laughed. There had only been one way, ever, to get Liz to face feelings she was determined to ignore, not counting that—incident in Bill’s hospital room. And if Bill were here to replicate that, she wouldn’t be having this problem. So. She just had to get a lie detector. Well, no, without Bill’s income, with Olive not writing, they couldn’t afford to buy a lie detector. She had to build a lie detector. 

Olive hadn’t built the first lie detector. She’d been there, yes, when they finally got it working, but parts of it had been assembled before she even met the Marstons, and even the times she’d spent watching Bill and Liz—or Professor and Mrs. Marston, as she’d thought of them then—fiddle with connections as they modified the machine to take a blood pressure reading felt like a lifetime away now. So her first attempt was just to go down to the basement workshop and dig through the bins and shelves of miscellany that had accumulated during the years they’d been occupying the house, hoping that somewhere on the back of a shelf she’d find that very first machine, or more likely one or two components that hadn’t been salvaged for scrap during the war, or before that to build some creation dreamed up by one of the children. 

She extracted the slate cylinder from the back of a shelf, but otherwise just succeeded in covering herself in dust and losing track of time. She rescued her prize and hid it in one of the hatboxes just as Olive Ann arrived home from school requesting a snack and wondering why she was so messy. Olive said, not completely untruthfully, that she’d been cleaning in the basement. (The shelves were, she was sure, better organized now. There was something to be said for the order imposed on a space through years of work in it, the way one of her colanders lived above the kitchen sink and another in a cupboard with the pots—but years of intermittent fiddling by one to seven people, depending on the year or the season, was a different matter altogether.) Still, after providing Olive Ann with a glass of milk, an apple, and permission to raid the cookie jar once the first two were consumed, Olive hurried upstairs to change out of her dungarees and wash up. By the time Liz and the boys came home for dinner, she was neat and tidy, with pots bubbling on the stove.

After a few days’ careful poking through the children’s things, Olive decided that there were no more recognizable parts of the lie detector in the house. No more shortcuts. She’d have to do the assembly from scratch. She made a few abortive notes about the parts and pieces she remembered, but the list was pitifully short. She needed help. But there was no one, now, whom she could ask for help—not Bill, certainly not Liz, and for this project, not the children or a friend from town. 

For a few days she put off making the next connection, threw herself into weeding in the garden and deep cleaning the bedrooms and the halls. But after Olive found Liz staring blankly out the bedroom window, holding one of Bill’s ties that she'd gone up to find for Byrne an hour earlier, she sat herself down the next morning with a cup of tea and said out loud what she had been trying not to remember. “There will be notes in the study. I can start there.” She finished her cup of tea, dragging things out by reading the paper until her last sip was stone cold. Then she tied a kerchief over her hair and set her chin. She was going in, and she would not be dragged under by grief. Not this time. 

The study wasn’t covered as thickly by dust as she’d feared; in fact it bore the suspicious traces of Liz’s brand of cleaning, some surfaces spotless while others had been omitted entirely. Olive smiled a little. Liz must, she thought, really be trying—not just noticing the closed study door, but also spending part of some Saturday to clean in there, no doubt thinking that Olive wouldn’t need to. In fact Olive’s hand twitched, wanting to pick up a duster and finish off the incongruous side table and shelf that Liz had missed. But she held steady to her purpose, crouching down to pull out the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, where Bill and Liz had preserved what they saw as their most important notes and papers from their Harvard days, gradually thinning them out as Bill’s other projects had required more space and they had both become more certain that they’d never return to teaching. She flipped through them, smelling the old paper and the stale air of the room. There were so many files, and so many of them had labels that seemed potentially relevant—“The Effects of Deception on the Body,” “The Connection of Systolic Blood Pressure to Emotion,” “Psychological Possibilities in the Deception Tests,” “A Theory of Emotions and Affection Based Upon Systolic Blood Pressure Studies.” Olive was developing a cramp in her leg as she hesitated among them. 

She stood up, shaking herself out, and drew the curtains, letting light into the room for the first time in, perhaps, a year. She opened the window to let the fresh spring air in—it was a bit cool, but the chill would help connect her to the present, she hoped, prevent her from getting lost in thoughts of the first time she read these papers, a girl at Radcliffe full of ambition and uncontrollable longings. It had been autumn then; the air had smelled completely different from the fresh mud smell of New York spring. She gave in to the desire to finish the dusting as well, making the room completely habitable. Almost completely habitable. The covered typewriter at Bill’s desk still loomed, almost monstrous in its lumpen presence. Had the typewriter been the problem all along? Olive rolled back her sleeves and braced herself to move it, hefting its bulk up to the top of the filing cabinet, out of its position at the center of the room. She dusted the top of the desk, removing the traces of its presence there. She felt a sudden expansion, almost in her lungs, as if the air in the room had suddenly become breathable. As if there was finally space for her here. 

With a new feeling of confidence, she returned to the cabinet and pulled all the files she’d been considering, stacking them in two piles on the left side of the desk. She returned to the kitchen and made herself another cup of tea, then sat down to read through them, one by one, moving them either back into the cabinet or into a third pile as she decided whether they’d be useful to her. As she read, despite herself, she was drawn into the research, into the admiration for Bill and Liz and their work together that had pulled her so forcefully into their lives in the first place. She read through files that didn’t turn out to have anything to do with her current project just for the pleasure of Liz’s crisp writing, of Bill’s optimism about healing the world through a better understanding of emotion, of coming across phrases that rang in her ears as she remembered them being spoken or read aloud, usually by one of the Marstons but sometimes by Olive herself, flushing with pride as she saw the smile on Liz’s face that meant she was making a real contribution to the work. 

Finally hunger drove her out to the kitchen, where a brief glance at the clock on the stove told her it was past time to pack everything away and get started on the daily chores and dinner preparations. She grabbed a quick slice of bread with butter and turned to look at the office, considering whether she could just close the door on her work without really putting it away. No, if Liz had dusted in there once, she might again, and there was no telling where the children might choose to go—they were old enough now that they didn’t roam the house so much as they had when they were younger, playing sardines and laughing hilariously, but they did sometimes tuck themselves away in odd corners, demanding privacy from their parents or one another. She’d need to put her papers away. Careful not to think too much about what she was doing, Olive pulled open one of the desk drawers, the one that had always held her drafts of Family Circle articles, that Bill and Liz had been careful not to disturb even when they were most taking her for granted as some sort of modernized Victorian angel of the house. She pulled out the papers already there—they must all be wildly out of date by now—and replaced them by the files left on the desktop. She closed the window, though not the curtains, and stepped out of the study, carrying the papers out to be burned. She turned back to close the door but at the last moment changed her mind and left it open.

After that she spent part of each morning in the study, setting the kitchen timer so that she’d remember to do the shopping or the laundry. At first she just read through the old papers, some of them several times, making notes of the most important points and of questions she had that she didn’t think were addressed in anything she’d read. As she gained a firmer understanding of what was and was not in the papers and notes, she started to plan, drawing diagrams of how the lie detector worked and trying to work out how she would build one. She realized the papers didn’t go into enough detail about the mechanical aspects of the detector and raided Pete’s shelves for books on mechanics and electricity, each of which she carefully replaced before the children returned from school. 

Finally she found she couldn’t make any progress without beginning to build. She took a list to the hardware store, looking for components ranging from wires to a motor that would rotate the cylinder to create the readout. The man at the store raised his eyebrows, asking whether her husband had written the list. “No!” she said, indignantly. Then she remembered that now that the war was over, everyone had decided to return to the pretense that women had no mechanical aptitude. And that she did need help to find some of the items on her list. “My son, actually. A school project.” The man nodded understanding and produced spools of wire, screws and fittings, a perfect tiny motor, a piece of sheet metal, some tin snips. Olive paid him and, with her purchases in hand, walked briskly out of the shop. She was biting her lip, holding back a rant about the position of women in society that she should send to her aunt rather than deliver to a shopkeeper who had, in reality, done everything she needed, if not everything she wanted.

Over the next few weeks she puttered and tinkered, replacing most of the files in the cabinet so that she could store the growing detector and some of the stranger unincorporated parts in her drawer each day when she finished working in the basement. She found herself humming as she worked, then singing. Then singing as she cooked or cleaned; she hadn’t realized that she missed the hard mental work, but there was an element of challenge in this project that was missing in the day-to-day routines of the house, and Olive was reveling in it. 

She didn’t realize how much her demeanor had changed until one Saturday morning. Liz came in while Olive was putting up her hair to go to the city and look for a few things she hadn’t been able to buy locally—some spices, a book Donn wanted, a mercury manometer. Olive caught Liz’s eye in the mirror and smiled, but the smile slid off her face as she absorbed the tightness of Liz’s mouth, the hard look in her eyes. She turned, her mouth opening in confusion, just as Liz spoke. 

“Who is it? Who are you planning to meet?” Olive could tell that Liz had meant to keep her tone light, but it had come out brittle, accusatory.

“No one! I’m just doing some shopping.” It was the truth, but Olive knew as the words came out of her mouth that they sounded defensive, false.

Liz let out her breath in a huff. “You might at least have the courtesy to tell the truth. You know I don’t experience sexual jealousy. I’d just have thought you’d want to introduce us, that’s all.” She turned her face away, examining her nails or pretending to.

Olive laughed, briefly, bitterly, before she got control of herself. Softened her tone submissively. “Liz. Look at me.” Waited for Liz to turn her eyes to Olive’s. “I _am_ telling the truth.” She tried to will understanding into the other woman. Into her—lover, her friend, her almost-wife.

Liz gazed into her eyes for a few moments, then turned sharply, stalked over to the door, closing it, and then to the window, the farthest point in the room from Olive. Facing the corner, her voice pitched to be just too quiet for anyone in the rest of the house to hear, she said, “But you can’t be! You’re so _happy_. I know… Olive, I know I’ve been difficult. I know I can’t be making you that happy—you keep _singing_.” She crossed her arms, shrinking into herself unhappily in the way that Olive had grown accustomed to in the time since Bill’s illness, and more since his death.

Olive took a deep breath, reminding herself to be patient. Reminding herself that Liz had been careful to do everything she’d promised that day in the hospital, was undoubtedly trying even now. “I’m happy to be with you, even if you’re difficult.” She crossed the room to Liz, turned her around by the shoulders. “Has it occurred to you I might be happy just because I am? Because it’s spring, and the children have grown up strong and caring, and I finally have enough stockings?” 

Liz’s mouth quirked a little at that last, then tightened again. “But how _can_ you be? You can’t be singing about stockings.”

“Not just stockings,” Olive agreed. “But I don’t need—what did you think, a gentleman caller?—to be happy. I have enough here.” She gestured indicating something, she didn’t know what. Liz, or the room, the house, the family, the life that Olive had chosen. Had chosen twice.

“I didn’t know whether—a man or a woman—but Olive. I know that I—without Bill…” Liz trailed off, pulling into herself again.

“Oh, Liz. No.” Olive leaned forward, kissed her. Liz pulled back at first, then grabbed Olive’s shoulders, pulled her in hungrily, desperately. Olive broke off the kiss, needing breath, needing to make sure Liz understood. “I love you. Not as some part of you-and-Bill, The Marstons. As you. If there were ever someone else, I would tell you. You would know. It’s alright.” Olive petted Liz’s hair gently, trying to convey her feelings through her touch. Liz bent down again to kiss her, and Olive opened her mouth, let Liz drink her in for as long as she liked. She concentrated on the sensations of Liz’s lips pressing against hers, her teeth taking tiny bites of Olive’s lips. Olive’s fingers were tangling in Liz’s hair as she continued stroking it, gently encouraging the kiss. She pulled one out and let it travel down Liz’s neck, trace the curve of her chin. “Dearest,” she whispered, almost into Liz’s mouth. 

Liz pressed their lips together once more, firmly, then pulled back. But now she was smiling, one hand coming up to touch her own mouth. “I’m glad you’re happy. I’m sorry I—misunderstood.”

Olive smiled back at her. “Thank you.” She checked the time on the clock beside the bed. “I should go—I do have shopping to do, I have to get the train. Will you be okay?” 

Liz pulled herself together, her back straightening and everything about her suddenly becoming different, sharp and full of purpose. “Yes, of course. Will you be back late? Should I make dinner?” 

“That would be wonderful. I should get in on the 4:45, so any time is fine.” Olive squeezed Liz’s arm briefly, then returned to the mirror, fixing herself up as quickly as she could. Behind her, Liz let herself out of the bedroom, and Olive heard her run down the stairs.

  


Olive had thought that once she had all the pieces, had each component put together, the rest would be easy. But it felt like she spent weeks waking up every day, thinking this would be the day she’d finish the detector, only to find that some connection she couldn’t find was loose and the motor didn’t turn on, or the blood pressure reading didn’t register properly. Once she calibrated a spring a bit too tightly and broke her slate pencil. In the last twenty years these had become harder to find, and she eventually had to make a whole trip into the city for another; when she found them, she bought five. Still, one day she tested it on herself, awkwardly, but as far as she could tell, this time it worked. It was ready. She was ready.

Or perhaps she wasn’t. She kept thinking of reasons why she couldn’t show it to Liz—what if one of the children came in? Or what if Liz, herself, was upset by it? She hadn’t figured out what to say, what to ask, beyond the first real question. Or what if the machine had only seemed to work on Olive—should she try it on someone else? Who, and with what excuse? She waited for a Sunday when all the children were safely out of the house, then somehow failed to get the nerve up to bring Liz into the study, then it started to rain and Donn came home to get an umbrella, then Liz decided that Olive should take a walk in the rain with her, which was good, actually. It was a good walk.

Then Olive thought she’d keep Liz home from work one day that week, the old trick with kissing her until she called in sick. But when the time came, she couldn’t stomach it. Each day she’d wake up, plan to keep Liz home, and then when the moment came she’d remember that one awful day, that awful woman who came in to return a casserole instead of leaving it on the doorstep like any decent person, and be unable to make the first move. Her singing started to fade into humming, and her humming into silence. She thought Liz noticed, started to give her worried looks and solicitous touches, but it was hard to know whether she was imagining it. 

Finally, a night came when Olive couldn’t sleep. She’d spent the evening pretending not to notice while Liz held a book that she wasn’t reading, focusing her own attention ruthlessly on the radio and the mending. And she’d built the lie detector—she’d taught herself how to build a lie detector, relearned everything she’d known in college and then some—to solve this problem, but without actually using it, the problem would never get solved. So she waited for it to get late, for the children to be, most likely, asleep, and got out of bed. She pulled her robe around herself and slipped down to the kitchen, for once not really trying to be quiet. Liz, always a light sleeper, sat up as Olive opened the door, her crisp movements betraying the fact that she hadn’t slept yet either. “Where are you going?” she whispered.

“To make cocoa. Do you want some?”

“Only if I can have liquor in it.” Olive could hear a smile in Liz’s voice, and felt an answering smile on her own face as she remembered how shocked she’d been by Liz’s openness about drinking when they first met.

“Come down for it in a few minutes, then.” Olive crept downstairs, turning on the kitchen light and pouring milk into a saucepan. Then she slipped into the study, set up the lie detecter as quickly and quietly as she could, and stepped back out, closing the door behind her. She finished making cocoa, pouring it into two mugs just as Liz came into the room, alternating between the two as she scraped the last, rich, drops from the pan. Liz poured a generous measure of bourbon into her own drink, then offered it to Olive, who took the bottle to add rather less to her own. Her heart was beating fast, but she still wanted her wits about her, didn’t want to drift into a pleasant haze and go back up to sleep before finishing what she’d come downstairs for. She forced herself to sit in a chair and relax her body language as she sipped her cocoa, watching Liz for the ideal moment. When they’d both drunk about half their portions, Olive decided the time had come. She stood, picking up her mug. 

“Aren’t you going to finish yours?” Liz asked.

“I am. But—come with me.” Olive smiled at her. Now that she was in motion, her relaxation suddenly felt genuine. Or perhaps it was the bourbon, or the still-unusual treat of the cocoa.

“I don’t think I ought to go anywhere, dressed like this,” Liz protested, indicating the nightgown she hadn’t put a robe over. 

“Not to the porch. Come on.” Olive pulled Liz out of her chair with her free hand, led her into the study, sat her in the desk chair, and—last—turned on the desk lamp, making a small pool of light that perfectly illuminated the lie detector. 

Liz froze, then turned her head slowly between Olive and the machine. “Where did you find that? I was sure that we’d taken it apart years ago.”

“I didn’t find it. I made it. I used your notes, yours and Bill’s, and I made it. For you.” Olive had meant to have a smooth speech, had planned this all out in her head perfectly, but somehow she found she couldn’t give one now.

“For me?” Liz’s eyebrows raised, and she took a genteel sip of her cocoa.

“For you,” Olive confirmed, then turned away from Liz to close the curtains and lock the door. “I need you to tell me the truth, you see.” She felt herself starting almost to grow taller, felt her confidence in her decision rush into each of her movements. She set her cocoa on the table, very precisely, and stood in front of Liz, her hands at her sides. “Are you ready?”

Liz started to protest, to argue that she was always truthful with Olive. But she stopped herself, then, after a breath, asked the key question. “The truth about what?” 

Olive smiled, rewarding her for her quickness. “That’s always the question, isn’t it? What can you tell the truth about, and what can’t you? But I think it will work best if you don’t know in advance.”

“Yes,” Liz agreed, “that’s what we found. Of course, you know that.” Olive nodded, and picked up the cuff. Liz said, “Yes,” and rolled up her right sleeve, her eyes fixed on Olive’s face and her lips slightly parted. Olive fastened the cuff around her bicep, pulling the familiar straps tight as she watched Liz’s face. Satisfied with what she saw, she tested the fit of the cuff, then made the rest of the connections and pulled a chair across from Liz. 

“Ready to proceed?” Olive asked, picking up a pencil and straightening a notepad she’d left to the side of the detector.

Liz took a sip of her cocoa, then returned her hands primly to her lap and nodded. “Ready,” she said. Olive switched on the lie detector.

“What is your name?” Olive kept her eyes on Liz, though her pencil scratched on the paper as she noted the question.

“Elizabeth Holloway Marston.” Liz spoke solemnly, though her eyes smiled as the pencil scratched on the slate tube.

“True. What is your date of birth?” Olive watched the machine’s reading carefully, checking that it was working correctly.

“February 20.” Liz’s voice was steady, and the needle scratched a small, uneven wave on the cylinder. Reassured, Olive returned her gaze to Liz.

“True. Do you love me?” Despite herself, Olive heard her voice waver slightly.

“Yes. Yes, Olive, yes.” Liz looked into Olive’s eyes, concern showing on her face. The pencil scratched.

“True.” Olive smiled reassuringly at Liz. “Do you miss your husband?”

“Yes.” Liz rubbed one arm a little with the other hand, and Olive thought her eyes focused now on the wall behind Olive.

“True. Does missing your husband affect your daily life?” Olive clenched her pencil, holding her breath a moment as she waited for Liz to respond. She forced herself to exhale evenly, not wanting her own affect to sway the results of Liz's test.

“No.” The pencil scratched, the wave amplifying as Olive glanced at the machine. Liz didn’t move. 

“False.” Olive switched the lie detector off. “Liz, I haven’t seen you cry once, and every time the subject comes up I watch you either disappear in the distance or put on a stiff upper lip and comfort everyone else. Comfort me. But you’re not yourself. I need you to—you need to—grieve, so that you can live again.” She watched Liz anxiously, looking for the effects of her words.

“But I don’t—” Liz stilled her hands in her lap, gripping them together. “Olive, are you saying that I need to be more sad, or less?” She sounded as if she didn't know whether to be forlorn or angry.

“I’m saying you need to face it.” Olive set her pencil down as she leaned towards Liz. “You can’t pretend it doesn’t touch you. Bill is dead, and that’s been hard for you, and you need to face that.” 

Liz shook her head. “But don’t you think I face that every day? Every time I sit down to dinner, every time we go up to bed?” Her hands flew apart, picking imaginary lint off her nightgown.

“I think—yes, every day is hard for you.” Olive dropped her eyes away from Liz’s face as she focused on picking her words. “I see that. But you don’t—I don’t think that you really let yourself feel that. You sort of—”

“But don’t you see I _can’t_—Olive, I love you, but if I let myself feel Bill being gone—I mean really feel it—I couldn’t function. I couldn’t go to work. And I—” As her words rushed out, Liz pulled at the straps for the detector, removing them with clumsy fingers. Olive reached over to help, but Liz brushed her away. “He was—I don’t even know who I would be without him. Olive. I don’t know who I _am_ now. If I let myself feel it, it’s like being eaten alive. How could you ask me to—” Her words cut off in a sob, and she gulped back the rest of her cocoa, then pushed her way out of the chair and out of the study, turning the key Olive had left in the lock.

Olive watched, paralyzed, as she closed the door softly behind her. Then she forced herself into action—if she missed this chance, if she left the conversation here, how long would it be before she had the courage to broach the topic again? “Liz!” Olive called loudly enough to be urgent but softly enough to avoid waking the children. “Liz, stay with me, damn you.” As she turned the corner to see Liz in the kitchen, washing out the cocoa pot, she froze. “Liz. I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have—” Now tears were crowding Olive’s eyes, finding their way into her voice and preparing to spill down her cheeks. She swallowed hard, trying to collect herself.

“No.” Liz was still turned to the sink, and her voice was quiet—almost too quiet for Olive to hear. “No. You deserve me to be fully here. I promised to be here, with you.” Liz turned off the water, but she didn’t turn around. “I’ve made a mess of things again, haven’t I?” Her back was straight, but her head hung down, as if she were trying not to meet her own gaze in the mirror of the kitchen window.

Olive nodded slowly. “No, well, yes. A bit of a mess. But Liz—can I come to you?”

“Yes. Please.” Liz’z voice broke a little, like she was choking back tears, and Olive rushed around the table to put her arms around her, leaning her head into the back of Liz’s neck. Liz put a hand on Olive’s arm, as if to prevent her letting go or pulling away. Olive could feel her shaking. She tightened her arms around her and tucked her chin into Liz's shoulder.

“Tell me what you’re feeling,” Olive said quietly.

“Olive, I—“ Liz broke off. Olive waited a few seconds, then turned Liz firmly around and maneuvered her into a chair. She stood in front of her, her hands on Liz’s shoulders.

“Tell me what you’re feeling.” This time Olive’s voice was more authoritative.

“I’m afraid. It hurts.” Liz leaned forward, burying her face in Olive’s waist. “Olive, it hurts!”

“Yes, I know,” Olive said, stroking Liz’s hair. “I know, it does.” For the first time she felt confident that her plan had worked, that they were heading back on the right track. “I know,” she said, as Liz muffled her tears in Olive’s robe. “You’ve been very brave, sweetheart, but you don’t need to always be the strong one. It’s alright. I’m here.” Olive let her mouth go on murmuring comforting nonsense, let herself be comforted by it too. The clock over the stove ticked, marking off the minutes until the morning. Olive imagined she could hear the children upstairs, breathing slowly in their sleep, imagined the grass growing in the yard and the worms burrowing through the earth. “It’s alright, Liz. Life will go on, and we’ll go on too,” she said. “We’ll go on too. It’s alright.”

They stayed that way for a long time, until Olive's body got restless with standing still. Until the clock had ticked over the hour, and Liz's breathing had evened out, had stayed even for long enough that Olive lost track. "Let's go on to bed," Olive said finally, and they did. Olive closed the study door as they passed through the hall. Time enough to clean up in the morning, she thought.

The bed felt less empty to Olive than it had in a long time. Less haunted, and less empty. Both.


End file.
